Taj Mahal

I knew the title of this one would get your attention. It's probably the one place in India that people have heard about even if they don't really know what it is. It's usually used to refer to the level of luxury in a place you are staying like a hotel. "It was like the Taj Mahal," I usually hear my guests saying as they depart from a visit out at the Wonder Lake Ranger Station. I can now tell you that the Taj Mahal is pretty spectacular and the craftsmanship in its marble carvings is amazing. I can also tell you that it's not really somewhere you would want to stay because it's a mausoleum.
In 1631, the Mumtaz Mahal, the second wife to Emperor Shah Jahan, died while giving birth to their 14th child. The Emperor was so distraught that he built the Taj Mahal a memorial to his deceased wife. It would finally be completed in 1653. The Emperor would only enjoy the Taj Mahal for a few years after its completion, before being overthrown and imprisoned by his son. The new Emperor would be kind enough to give Shah Jahan an elegant prison cell with a view of the Taj Mahal and upon his death, Shah Jahan would be placed next to his wife inside its domed marble walls.
The Taj Mahal is a massive white marble structure set on a high platform base so that when you look at it from the ground all you see in the background is sky. It is surrounded by beautiful tree lined, green lawns with fountains and reflecting ponds. Inside there are meticulously carved marble screens. The marble walls are decorated with designs of flowers and birds that are all made from inlaid gemstones. The detail is mind blowing. And in the middle, under the giant rotunda are the two tombs. It is beyond a doubt, worth the visit. You could spend hours sitting in the grass under one of the trees gazing at the Taj Mahal.
After that, there is not much else to see in the city of Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. There are other temples and a big fort but they pale in comparison. So, as almost every other tourist does, I zipped in, checked out the Taj on one day, saw a few other sights on the next day and then zipped out. By overnight train of course. Why not save time and money and combine transportation with accommodation?!
Next I headed to the city of Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan. There are a few things to see in Jaipur including an observatory called Jantar Mantar, that has a giant 90 foot high sun dial in it that can tell time to within seconds.
There is also a giant fort outside of the city that is mostly intact and interesting to see. But the real exciting part of the fort was that it had a big grassy area in it with several trees and was full of monkeys! But not just any monkeys, noooo. So far the monkeys I had seen have been the Rhesus Macaque monkeys who, as you've heard me describe, can be aggressive and often had really nasty fights with each other. These monkeys were Gray Langur Monkeys and were super cool. The were about 1/3 larger than the Macaques and they had a really mellow disposition. Basically they just hung out and watched people go by. They had gray fur with black faces and at times looked like little old men. They had really long tails that would curl up in a loop over their backs when they walked or would hang straight down when they were sitting on a tree branch. Their tails were easily the length of their bodies.
But the thing I found so interesting about them was how "human" they were. Or I guess if we're talking evolution here, how much we are like them. When they sit, they don't just squat on the tree branch or building ledge like the Macaque do. They sit down on their butts and let their legs dangle off the edge. Then they cross their feet at the ankles and fold their hands in their laps. Then they just sit and you can see their heads following people as they watch them go by. At times you would see one on the ground lounging. It would be sitting on its butt with its back against a tree and its legs out in front of it. Feet crossed, just kickin' it. I stared at the guy who was lounging wondering if he would get agressive. He just looked at me and said, "What?" I said, "Nothin'." He said, "Alright then," and turned his head as if he could care less. So friggin' cool. I could almost imagine that guy with a Camel cigarette hanging from his mouth and a Vinnie Barbarino accent.
And when they weren't hanging out, they were playing in the grass with each other. Not fighting like the Macaque who seemed to always be trying to establish dominance over each other. The Langurs would just play. And even when one monkey was alot larger than the other they would still playfully wrestle with each other and chase each other aruund, rolling in the grass when one caught the other. Sometimes when one monkey would be chasing another and was just about to catch the one in front, the one in front would throw a cartwheel. I'm not talking that it would move and kinda look like a cartwheel, I'm talking full on cartwheel here. They would go from running on all fours, to taking a couple steps on just their legs with their hands in the air, then tos down sideways onto their hands, up into the head stand and then into a round-off landing. This round-off landing, I realized would put them in a position where they were now facing the monkey that was chasing them and they could still wrestle rather than be tackled and knocked to the ground. Genius.
I saw one of them do a run and jump from the ground to the top of a wall that was about 8 or 9 feet tall. I'm now seeing where the Monkey God thing came from.
I watched two of them wrestle and at one point one of the monkeys grabbed the other one by the ear. The one who got grabbed on the ear scrunched up his face and let out a monkey type "Oww! Let go!" And the other one let go. It was hilarious.
At one point, the two Langurs who were wrestling with each other came to rest face to face. They were in a sitting position with their hands out in front of them. One of the monkeys tried to grab the other monkey's hand but the second monkey pulled it away in time. Then, to my disbelief, the second monkey put his hand back in the same spot and the first monkey tried to grab it again, but was once again was unsuccessful. For about 3 or 4 more times they did this with each other. They were playing the "Hand Grab" game, a variation on the human "Hand Slap" game! If that's not a sign of higher intelligence, I don't know what is.
One of the other highlights of Jaipur was going to see a Bollywood movie at the Raj Mandir Cinema, the number one Hindi cinema in India. It's an old classic movie theater with a strange pastel, cream puff design inside. There are two different ticket prices for two different sections of the theater, that I would realize were the regular floor and the balcony. The balcony being the more expensive. The lobby was huge and reminiscent of some of the old Hollywood theaters. The food at the snack bar wasn't that different than that in the US: candy, soda and pop corn. But they didn't use butter on their pop corn, or should I say they didn't use buttery flavored yellow oil. The only thing I saw that was different was that they sold fresh pastries there at the snack bar.
The movie I was seeing was a comedy/action movie that was a recent release. The plot was so simple that you could follow it even in Hindi (there were no subtitles). The movie was about 2 hours long with a 15 minute intermission in the middle, which seemed strange to me for such a short film. The seats were comfy and the place was clean as you were not allowed to bring any food into the theater itself, you had to eat it out in the lobby.
The part that we, as Hollywood movie watchers would find strange is that at 3 or 4 times during the movie, everyone breaks into full song and dance. Basically a full music video takes place. Two of the song routines were performed by the stars in the movie, which is funny enough. Since it was an action movie, there was a tough guy in the movie. It was funny to watch him chasing a bad guy and then break into song and dance. It would be like seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger beating someone up and then start singing and dancing. But the other two songs were done by people who were not in the movie at all. I'm assuming they were pop stars in India.
At the end of the movie, just as the credits started to roll, the lights came up and everybody got up and rushed out. I was the only one trying to sit and watch the credits. Not just because I'm one of those credit watchers, but because there were bloopers being shown as the credits rolled, and who doesn't love bloopers. The Indians apparently. No one cared, they all made a bee line out of there. And it couldn't have been more than 2 minutes into the credits when the curtain came down and they shut the credits off, no where near done. I got up, went to the restroom and when I came back out the next showing of the movie had already started. It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes. Get 'em in, get 'em out.
One day in Jaipur, I was walking down a street that wasn't in a touristy area, so none of the shop owners were trying to get my attention. I decided to spend the morning just wandering neighborhoods before heading back into the center of Jaipur to check out the usual touristy historical sites.
After a while, one shop owner said "Hello" and asked where I was from. I told him, but had my guard up waiting for him to try and sell me something. He asked if I'd like to sit and talk, and brought two chairs out. The shop owner next door came out, too, with a chair and we chatted for a while. They basically wanted to know about my life in Alaska and what it was like. They said that so many times when they say hello to foreigners, the foreigners just blow by them without saying hello back. They said that they felt that foreigners could be really rude.
I told them that I understood how they felt but explained to them what it was like to get bombarded and hassled all the time and then a number of times get cheated by the touts. I told them that it makes the tourists harden up to the locals and not trust anyone.
They agreed that the people who worked in the touristy areas viewed tourists as ATMs and just wanted to get money out of them, but they said that if you only travel in the touristy areas you will only see the touts and you will think that that's how everyone in India is. They said that tourist should try to go to the areas where the regular people live and work and try to see how they live. He said that traveling abroad will never happen for most Indians so many of them just want to know what the rest of the world is like and the only way they can find out is through foreigners.
I told him that most foreigners are here for a very short time, some in India for less than a week and almost everyone gets a guide or uses a guide book. Neither of which will tell you where to just "go" to see "everyday people", that's why they don't.
He asked me why I was in that neighborhood when there was nothing touristy to see.
I told him I was just wandering around aimlessly trying to get a glimpse at how people live and work.
He asked me if I wanted to go out to the outskirts of the city and see how handmade rugs were made.
I said, yes, of course and we hopped on his motorcycle and zipped out of the city to this small warehouse. In it, these women were weaving rugs by hand on a giant loom, all of it manually operated, no machinery. The rugs were made of hand woven dyed wool. The women would thread each individual thread and cut it with a knife following a pattern on a piece of paper. I'm told it takes them a month to make a rug. From there the rugs are brought into this room where four men soak it with some sort of water/chemical mix and continually broom it down with wooden paddles. From there the rugs are brought up onto the roof and stretched out in a frame to dry. Once dried they are trimmed up and sent off to whoever has them ordered.
It was fascinating to watch. Especially knowing that most rugs in the US are synthetic and mass produced by machines. It's amazing to see the time that goes into each one.
The shop owner who drove me there had dropped me off and went to his house in the area to have lunch with his wife. He asked if I wanted him to bring me back a plate of food. I did because I was starving but because my stomach was in such turmoil, I knew I couldn't eat it because I knew it would be really spicy. I thanked him and lied and said that I had had a big breakfast.
A while later he came back and picked me up. We zipped back into Jaipur to his shop and had tea and chatted some more. By then I noticed that the whole day had gone by and I hadn't seen any sights. It was late afternoon, so I told them I had to be going. We said our goodbyes and off I went.
But as I was leaving the neighborhood I realized that I had just seen the best site of all.